When the three Klansmen scampered inside, police sealed the courthouse entrance. When they thought it was safe, the Klansmen slipped past their police guard and ran outside, but quickly ducked back into the courthouse again.

The Associated Press reported that three of the Klansmen, “along with a new supporter, fled down one hall, up another, up a back staircase two flights, and hid in the bathroom,” where they told a reporter they were “surprised” at the “attitude of the crowd.”

Rose Marie Seay, AP Wire

“‘They accused us of being racists,’ one said, wiping the sweat from his forehead with his shirttail.”

Klan members compared themselves to the NAACP, apples and oranges, and Great Titan Royals opined, “I don’t know of anyone who was ever fired for being a member of the NAACP, and that’s the same thing, just a difference of color.”

Then he disparaged Florida, and Jacksonville specifically: “If I ever cross the Florida-Georgia line again, it’ll be for a damn good reason,” which the whimpering white Titan seemed to suggest this recent Klan sojourn was not.

Then, as though Florida’s northernmost major city, and the Sunshine State’s most culturally “Southern,” had become a lost cause, he lamented, “It won’t be for any damn rally in Jacksonville.”

2.

It’s tempting to let this sordid history end on a joyous note of schadenfreude. But the absence of masks and hoods in our field of vision is not the end of this story.

In a 1971 conversation with anthropologist Margaret Meade published as A Rap on Race, James Baldwin says, “If history were past, history wouldn’t matter. History is the present. You and I are history. We carry our history. We act our history.”

Today’s masks are indistinguishable from the faces they cover. The figure of a racist villain hiding blindingly in his white hood makes for the perfect strawman. When he stands in our field of vision, we know with whom we’re dealing.

But before the Klan collapsed, it had learned to deny its racism. Racism no longer defended racism. Racism denied and decried racism. Saying it despised racism, racismcould better go about its business.

So we must watch carefully. The root of “ignorance” is “ignore.” The fruit is death. Pay careful attention. If attention is, indeed, something to be paid, then consider to what we owe it. If we pay not the attention we owe, we fall into debt, a debt that exacts itself, over and over, again and again, without conscience, without mercy.

3.

She was in her early 20s when she helped crash a Klan march and her image appeared in newspapers across the nation.

Rose Marie, or “Ree” as many friends called her, died in 2005 of unspecified neurological causes at Shands Hospital, Jacksonville. She was 44. Everybody who knew her loved her.

Her friends and family recall “the laughs we shared,” “cuttin’ up,” and being “partners in crime.” Her friend “Sugar Bear” owes “Reesee” her nickname, given because she was “always smiling.” Her friend Lorenzo says “Ree” “protected [him] as a child.” If not for “Ree,” he says, “I don’t know what I would’ve turned out to be. [She] kept me straight. I could come to her about anything and she took care of things for me.” Her friend Shaniqua says, “She always treated me with so much respect. She treated me like I was part of the family.” Her friend Ira calls her “the big sister I never had.”

In the Associate Press Wire photos of 20 years earlier, of 35 years ago, you can still see glimpses of the beautiful spirit her friends and family recall. Look again.

The get-togethers on 26th Street were never the same, her friend Yolandra says. I dare say that after Rose Marie Seay, no Klan rally in Jacksonville was ever the same either.